Rambo: The Video Game Review

Are you a Fan of Rambo? Do you love the gun wielding killing machine? Well this is your chance to step into our heroes shoes and jump into some jungle warfare action. Reef Entertainment acquired the video game development and publishing rights to our beloved Rambo in August 2011 and have passed the task of creating a new game to a bunch of developers called Teyon. They are a polish company that were founded in 2006.

Ok so from the start with you may have been quite excited by the prospect of a new Rambo game. After all there hasn’t been a game based on the Rambo franchise since way back in 1990 when we got to play Rambo 3 on the Mega Drive. So let’s find out what we are faced with now.

The first thing you notice after a brief intro cutscene introducing you to the story are the graphics. I have to admit they seem very outdated and are some of the worst I have seen in a while. It’s more of what you would expect from a game developed ten years ago that a modern day game. The cutscene’s look grainy and the actual in-game graphics and character models are grainy and nothing to write home about. The model for Rambo himself in the cutscene’s just look ridiculous. They have made Rambo’s character model all shiny to look like sweat, but it’s been overdone in a major way. Quite simply they look pretty bad. The audio in the game is very basic. What does start to get old very quick is the constant looping of the main in-game music. It plays over and over again, no matter how far you are into the game you get the same music playing. The developers are certainly trying to get their money’s worth out of the audio department.

The gameplay for Rambo is not a lovely first-person style game where you run about and choose where to duck for cover etc and have some freedom with a flowing story line to keep you captivated. This game is a on the rails arcade style shooter, with the odd cutscene thrown in to break the gameplay up a bit. This game is very linier and you have no way of choosing your path. Are you are required to do is simply shoot enemy’s that come in a constant flow and wait until you get another cutscene. This game feels like it would be far more fun if it were in an arcade with some nice big guns to blast your way through. It just doesn’t feel like a game made for gamers sitting at home.

There is slow motion mode called wrath mode, this mode at first seem plausible as slow motion killing is often quite good fun. However it just doesn’t seem to work or feel right. The enemies are far too good at shooting at you hitting spot on with every shot. They all have the shot of a top marksmen, this becomes really frustrating. As you are left to battle with things like no cover and having your weapon jamming all the time, the enemy just jumps around with no cover and manages to hit you with no trouble at all. Before each level you get to select between your two guns, a pistol and a rifle. However there really doesn’t seem to be any difference between them and it soon becomes apparent that it really doesn’t matter which selection you choose. There are also perks that help you along your way, but these again don’t feel like they make much difference. The whole time I was playing felt like I was just playing to get to see the next really bad cut-scene. It felt so repetitive and pretty boring.

Occasionally you get to play what I can only assume is the developers idea of a stealth mode. This involves quite simply pressing a button at the right time to duck and dive out of sight and navigate your way to the next location. There are also scenes that involve quick-time events, basically pressing the buttons as quick as you can in the right order. Similar to the stealth mode but it involves more than one button. This does help break up the monotonous gameplay, but really doesn’t make the game any more enjoyable to play.

The whole game feels the same. It’s almost like playing an interactive trailer for the Rambo movies with a game put in-between each part of the story. The levels are all exactly the same, just with different backgrounds. It really is pretty boring to play. I really wanted to like Rambo, after waiting so many years. When I first heard about it I was pretty excited. Rambo is our childhood hero and he has been laughed in the face by this poor attempt of a game. The game is defiantly not the worst game every in history, however it is very high up there on the list. I find it very hard to recommend this to anyone, and if you have never even watched a Rambo movie then don’t even bother. This is not a good introduction to our beloved franchise.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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